


Oscillating Model of Love

by sunboy



Category: VICTON (Band)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Fluff and Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, and a lot of mentions of Hanse, way too much space imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26592517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunboy/pseuds/sunboy
Summary: Subin thinks of the vastness of space, his mind full of nebulae and galaxies pulling away from each other and visions of dead stars in the night sky, and he can't sleep.
Relationships: Han Seungwoo/Jung Subin
Comments: 9
Kudos: 57





	Oscillating Model of Love

**Author's Note:**

> something for rene! thank u so much for getting me to write subseung and for being so lovely and understanding throughout it all <3 ily
> 
> im back with another subseung! all the space related info should be right but i highly encourage you to make your own research if you want to know more about the universe and anything related to it. as always this is unbeta'd but i tried my best to catch all typos^^

Subin thinks of the vastness of space, his mind full of nebulae and galaxies pulling away from each other and visions of dead stars in the night sky, and he can't sleep.

He gives up pretending to at least try and leaves his bed a few hours after Sejun and Seungsik get in their own beds and call it a night. The dorm is quiet with Chan and Byungchan back home, and Hanse, who usually keeps Subin company during their sleepless nights, happens to be crashing at a friend's tonight. There's no one to keep Subin's mind preoccupied with trying to outsmart a bunch of strangers at the Polus Map, nor there is anyone to complain that he's taking too long choosing a movie on Netflix, or even someone just there, doing nothing but comforting Subin with their presence as they both scroll down their Instagram feeds in silence. It's just Subin and the entire universe at his fingertips, and it's lonely, yeah—but worst of all, it provides no distractions for his already overworked brain.

The problem with Subin's brain is that, sometimes, the damn thing just won't turn off. That's how he finds himself in these situations: sleepless, tired to the bone, his body just begging to crash for at least a few minutes and yet— He can't get his mind to stop projecting itself outwards, trying to understand the universe at large, as if he'd be able to close his eyes and extend his hand and touch the very strings that make up everything. It's a little silly of him, but he can't help it; he blames Hanse for sending him spiraling straight into an existential crisis and then leaving him for dead.

It feels like hours pass as he lies on the couch, staring at the ceiling, trying to look past it to gaze deep into the sky and beyond that. Subin snaps back to reality when the dark room suddenly comes to life with a notification lighting up his phone screen.

Subin frowns, squinting at the too-bright lockscreen until he makes out the sender and then opens KakaoTalk. The last person missing, and the one person Subin would least expect to be talking to right now, Han Seungwoo, sent a dumb sticker to their groupchat at nearly 4am.

The oddness of it all is enough to get Subin's head back to Earth. He goes to his private chat with Seungwoo and types, _Why are you awake_ , and then hits send. His eyes fly to the hallway that gives way to the bedrooms, wondering if Seungwoo is texting Subin from his studio or if he's at the dorm and Subin somehow missed that small detail. It wouldn't be too surprising, considering how his head's been all day, but still. Subin feels inclined to believe that Seungwoo isn't home because, usually, that's how it is. They can't blame a man for loving his work, but it'd be nice if Seungwoo slept on his own bed instead of the shitty couch back at the PlayM building every once in a while.

Subin gets a reply in less than a minute.

**seungwoo-hyung**  
**can't sleep > <** 3:48 AM

**seungwoo-hyung**  
**i'm guessing you too? i tried calling hanse but even he is sleeping** 3:49 AM

Subin hums. Hanse is probably doing exactly what Subin is doing right now: despairing at the face of an uncaring, meaningless, ever-expanding universe; except he's probably making out with his friend in between philosophical rants and soju shots. He considers telling Seungwoo this before discarding the idea. Instead, Subin types: _Yeah. Got a lot on my mind_. Then he lets out a humourless chuckle, thinking that's the understatement of the century.

Subin sees it all when he closes his eyes: dark matter and quintessence and phantom energy. If he were anyone else at any other time and place, he might reach some unforeseen conclusion that would change the world of physics and philosophy and theology and who knows what else. Alas, he's just Jung Subin, lying on a dorm couch, staring at his ceiling and thinking it might be nice to talk to his heart's content to Seungwoo. To rant to someone who would listen to every word until they dried out, and the interstellar cloud fogging up Subin's thoughts would dissipate on its own and leave him empty enough to be able to sleep. The only problem is that Subin isn't up to doing that through texts and silly stickers, not when it's already hard enough to concentrate on typing correctly, and he's not sure calling at this hour is a smart choice.

The text arrives a few minutes later, the light from his lockscreen once again illuminating the otherwise dark room. Subin still has to squint to read the message.

**seungwoo-hyung**  
**wanna come to my room?** 3:54 AM

Subin becomes aware of a few things as he reaches the door to Seungwoo's single room. For the first time in the past week, he's pointedly aware of just how late in the night it is. If before now it felt like there were only three people awake in the entire world—Subin, Hanse, Seungwoo—and each of them was in a different point of the city, then the fact that now two of them are as close as sharing the same house feels almost too good to be true. Subin grabs the handle and opens the door almost not expecting Seungwoo to be there, but he is: Subin finds the man in the middle of his full sized bed, sheets thrown all around him, clothes wrinkled and hair a tousled mess that will be a pain in the ass to comb in the morning.

Seungwoo is there, he's actually there, and Subin is suddenly conscious of one more thing: the shirt that Subin's wearing is also one of Seungwoo's shirts.

He feels stupidly self conscious as he makes his way to the bed using the moonlight coming through the window as a guide. Seungwoo doesn't say anything about the shirt and so Subin walks until his knees hit the sommier and he lets himself be pulled into Seungwoo's open arms. He falls on the mattress with a soft thud and makes himself feel at home, resting his head against Seungwoo's chest, listening to the comforting sound of Seungwoo's heartbeat, and his mind is quiet for a moment.

Then he hears Hanse's words again.

"We are so tiny, Subin-ah. All we do is make noise on a tiny planet in the middle of nothing. We create so much chaos because we fear what happens when everything's quiet; the peacefulness that settles uncomfortably under our skin because it's the same as what's actually going to happen at the end of it all, which is nothingness."

It's hard to feel this way in an embrace as warm and loving as Seungwoo's is, but Subin feels it: the void growing in his chest, like a black hole born out of the organs found in his ribcage compressed to the limits and then beyond that, concentrated in a dot so small that you could squash it between your fingers. It's so tiny, so inconspicuous, but its force is stronger than anything on Earth and it sucks and pulls until there's nothing but itself. Subin pulls open his eyelids and stares at Seungwoo's chest thinking he sees Death there, and Subin doesn't cry because there are no tears. There's nothing.

"What's on your mind?" Seungwoo asks after a while.

Oh, boy.

It's hard to explain. He suddenly feels like he's drowning in dry land, but he tries his best to get the words out, helped by the long fingers running through his hair. Subin is not unlike a cat, relaxing at the touch. He closes his eyes again and sighs happily before trying to make sense of his thoughts, mentioning Hanse and concepts like existential nihilism and things like the Great Filter and the expansion of the universe and entropy, and by the time Subin realizes he got grossly distracted from the original topic, he's already deep in an explanation about the many Bigs and the various ways the universe might end when it does, because it _will_ end, we just don't know how, and Subin and his friends and everyone else on Earth and Earth itself will be long gone when it happens.

He bites his tongue and tastes a bit of blood, but Subin does nothing but wait with bated breath for Seungwoo to take in all that.

"Wow."

Subin waits a bit more, feeling dizzy.

"You weren't kidding when you said you had a _lot_ in your mind."

Seungwoo's tone has Subin smiling a little bit. There's a hint of a laugh as he says, "Sorry. What Hanse said got me doing tons of research into anything space related and it just made me spiral further. I'm sure like half of what I said didn't even make any sense."

"No, it did, it's just—" Seungwoo frowns; Subin feels it in his voice. "It's a lot for sure. And you're telling me you've been worrying about this for— How long already? While doing vocal practice and playing games with the others, even while on VLive? And you've had your fair share of solo schedules lately... It didn't seem like you were unfocused or anything, though."

Subin shrugs.

"I don't really think about it if there's stuff to distract me," he explains. Seungwoo stopped playing with his hair when he started talking so Subin rearranges himself so that his back is to the mattress and his eyes have nowhere to go but to the ceiling, the open window, and Seungwoo's eyes which shine just as brightly as the stars outside. "I think I'm just at that age where I'm forced to face the reality of life," he tells Seungwoo. "How it's all futile. Meaningless."

"Do you really think that?" Seungwoo asks, sounding small. "That there's no meaning?"

Seungwoo's voice is barely above a whisper, and Subin inhales sharply because the question sits heavily between them. He wraps his arms around himself and remembers that he's wearing Seungwoo's shirt, and now he remembers why he's wearing it: with most members being out of the dorm at the moment, Subin ended up being the one doing the laundry with no one to help him. It was while folding the clean clothes that he came across the black Burberry cotton shirt, immediately recognizing it as one of Seungwoo's, and Subin thought about how Seungwoo hadn't been home in a few days. He'd taken the shirt close to his face and smelled it, expecting nothing but the softener fragrance, but, surprisingly, Subin could feel it: Seungwoo's distinct smell, faint but still there, and something about it made Subin feel something akin to homesickness. Subin's been wearing that shirt to sleep ever since.

Could something like that—Subin wearing Seungwoo's shirt to sleep, thinking of the dorm as Home, thinking of Seungwoo as _home_ —truly have no meaning at all?

"I don't—"

He'll admit, it's a little funny. Subin's been using so much of their time together to ramble about YouTube videos he watched at 2am, paraphrasing vague scientific explanations still fresh in his memory and proposing philosophical questions that he himself hasn't had the time to properly tackle on his own. Even though he's done all that, his thoughts are still a complete and utter mess, nothing but chaos and disorder inside his head. But he wants to unravel his thoughts, if not to help himself understand then to help Seungwoo understand _him_.

He sincerely, meaningfully, from the bottom of his heart wants to do that. But then he gets choked up and all he can say is: "I don't know."

Subin's never sounded as pitiful as he does now. His voice sounds foreign to his own ears and he can't believe that this—the fact that he sounds so pathetic admitting he has no answers for something that will never have one—is what does it. His eyes well up with tears and his breathing becomes ragged against his will. He covers his face with his hands and tells himself: you can't be crying at ass o'clock because of something Hanse said a week ago; c'mon, you can't be crying on Seungwoo because of this; seriously, Subin, what the hell; pull yourself together.

The words turn harsher and harsher as Subin can't get himself to stop. In contrast, Seungwoo only gets kinder with his touches, pulling Subin closer and pressing his lips against Subin's temple. Subin can't stand the gentleness of it all and so he turns to hide against Seungwoo's chest again, but all he accomplishes is to make Seungwoo start rubbing gentle circles between his shoulder blades and whisper sweet nothings into his ear. "It's okay," Seungwoo says, his voice so much louder than Subin's thoughts. "It's okay, Subin-ah." They stay like that for an embarrassingly long amount of time before Subin starts to calm down.

"I'm sorry," Subin apologizes with a sniffle, pulling away to wipe harshly at his cheeks. It might be because he's wearing Seungwoo's shirt, or because he cried, or maybe because he couldn't answer Seungwoo's question. Either way, Seungwoo's response is to smile kindly at him.

"Don't be sorry. It's okay to not know these things, especially if you're talking about something as massive as the meaning of life or the universe."

Subin sniffles. "42."

"What?"

"42," he repeats. "The answer to life, the universe, and everything."

It takes Seungwoo a second to catch that reference, but then he's ruffling Subin's hair with affection and saying, "Well, there you go. You figured it out. You can stop thinking about it now."

"It's not that easy," Subin whines. If only it were. "I wish it were. I've been trying to forget about all this and go back to life before Hanse read Thomas Ligotti and got all existential and dragged me down with him, but no matter how hard I try—"

"So the issue is that you have nothing to distract you, right?" Seungwoo cuts in. Subin doesn't notice it right away, but there's something different in Seungwoo's tone. It's more... assertive. Like he has something planned, some card up his sleeve that he can't wait to reveal. "You said you don't think about this when there's stuff to distract you, so how about _I_ distract you?"

"Yeah?" Subin squints at Seungwoo, hesitantly asking, "And how would you do that?"

"How about we kiss?"

It's not what he was expecting Seungwoo to say. Far from it. Looking pleased with himself at Subin's stunned silence, Seungwoo takes the chance to cup Subin's face with one of his hands. Subin must have dry tears on his face because Seungwoo wipes them away with a gentleness that makes his chest hurt, and he thinks that maybe it wouldn't be too bad to kiss Seungwoo. It's not like he's never thought about it; Subin is known for randomly asking for good morning or good night kisses, and he feels so overjoyed with happiness everytime Seungwoo complies with a kiss on the cheek, he can't imagine how much better a kiss on the lips would feel.

"What do you think?" Seungwoo smirks. "Wanna kiss?"

"So that's your solution?" Subin asks with a scoff, but he tilts his head upwards so that their lips are closer. He's really not against the idea and he's sure Seungwoo knows that. "'Forget about your existential dread, let's make out'?"

"As if Hanse isn't doing that right now."

Seungwoo's words get a surprised chuckle out of Subin. "So you knew he's with Dongyeol?"

"He replied to me right before you got here," Seungwoo explains. The confident smirk on his face is stupidly hot even in the low lighting and Subin moves closer. "He told me to get lost and not call again until the morning. Not in those words, but— So the two of them are definitely not thinking about the death of the universe, are they?"

"I don't know, Hanse might very well be flirting by comparing Dongyeol to it."

"To what," Seungwoo frowns, "the death of the universe? That doesn't sound very romantic. More like the opposite."

"Death has its beauty, too."

It's Seungwoo's turn to be stunned. He's probably taken aback by Subin's words, which definitely don't fit the image of a twenty-something year old. It's true that they all like to joke and poke fun at Seungwoo's tendency to act like he's way older than his actual age, calling him an old man, someone with an old soul; but Subin sometimes feels that way, too. They all have their moments: Seungwoo when he shares his views on himself, Hanse when he gets in heated rants about the purpose of life, and now Subin, able to feel something other than primal terror at the prospect of death.

"Subinnie, you sound like an adult now."

"I am an adult."

"You're a baby," Seungwoo smiles. "What do you think Hanse is saying, then?" 

"Well, maybe not about the death of the universe, but I can see him using the universe to flirt." Subin moves as close as he can without outright kissing Seungwoo, their lips short of brushing. The hand cupping his face moves to rest between them, and Subin grabs it with his own hand, holding it gently. It's usually the other way round—Seungwoo's big hand enveloping Subin's—but this feels right, too. "Like, you know how your hands are really long and slender? Touching them is like caressing the clouds in Venus." He pauses for a second. "If they weren't acid, that is."

"If they weren't acid," Seungwoo repeats, and the way he's trying not to laugh makes Subin laugh.

"Shut up. I'm trying my best."

"You are? Ah, okay, okay, continue. So my hands are as soft as the clouds in Venus. What else?"

Subin pulls away to glare at Seungwoo, but in doing so, he's suddenly hit by the memory of their fans often saying that Seungwoo holds the universe in his eyes. It's not that Seungwoo's eyes remind Subin of the stars outside—it's that the stars outside aren't really _outside_. They're there, in Seungwoo's eyes, shining so brightly like the most distant light from a supernova reaching Earth. The memory hits him so suddenly and so hard that Subin stops breathing for a few seconds and all he does is stare at Seungwoo's eyes, and then at his lips, and then at his eyes again.

His voice is softer with his next try.

"Your voice," Subin says. "Your voice is like music."

"Music?"

He nods. "The music of the universe. Did you know? Explosions in outer space are silent—sounds can't travel in a vacuum. Everything is silent out there. But if we _could_ hear it... If we could listen to the universe, then I imagine it'd sound a little bit like life. Your voice reminds me of mid-sized stars being kind enough to explode, providing the universe with all the elements necessary for life."

Subin pauses, inhaling sharply, and he could just leave it at that. He knows this. But the words just spill on their own, and they pour out and they don't stop until there aren't any more words, just like he wanted earlier.

"Your voice when you talk and your body when you're onstage and your laughter when you're at your studio and we go and bother you. There's so much death in the universe, and it's beautiful in its own way, yeah, but you remind me of all the beauty in life, too. The stars that die and from their corpses new things are born, the explosion that started it all and the explosion that will start it all again— You remind me of life, hyung." 

So impossibly raw, Subin feels like he just exposed a part of himself he never meant to show anyone. It's not even anything too personal, nothing he can't take back or laugh off. It's no _I love you_ and yet he feels like that's exactly what it is: a confession of love.

"Did it work?" He asks with a forced laugh after the seconds pass by and Seungwoo doesn't say anything, trying to get rid of some of the heaviness in the air. The mood is too serious; too real. He can't even look at Seungwoo, diverting his gaze to the window, looking at the moon shine brightly in the night sky. "You feel like kissing me now, right?"

Seungwoo answers by doing exactly that.

It all happens very, very slowly. Subin is incredibly conscious of the passage of time at that moment, and yet time feels like it warps around them: it doesn't follow the rules of the universe, and like neutron stars and black holes, everything is weird. Seconds feel eternal and yet too little. Seungwoo pulls his hand away from between them and cups Subin's face, thumb gently caressing Subin's cheek before catching on Subin's lip, and in that time Subin's scanned the complete night sky, trying to count as many stars as he possibly can. The number escapes him when Seungwoo finally pulls close, just brushing their lips together, and finally, _finally_ , Subin's mind is void of anything space related. It's just Seungwoo; his soft lips pressed against Subin's, his warm hand moving to thread through Subin's hair until resting at the back of Subin's neck, his heartbeat loud in the early morning quietness. It's Seungwoo. It's always been Seungwoo.

They kiss and it's just that. A kiss.

Nothing about this is meaningless.

They part and no words are needed anymore. They still laugh and wonder how Hanse is doing and continue the conversation from there, but nothing they talk about is important—just small talk to pass this strange time. Subin snuggles against Seungwoo's chest and continues talking with Seungwoo's arms wrapped around him. Seungwoo sometimes smiles against Subin's hair. No words are needed because their actions are loud enough.

Subin falls asleep like that: in a warm, loving embrace, protected from the coldness and the emptiness of an uncaring universe. He's able to do that because he knows he's in the arms of someone who does care. Seungwoo cares.

Seungwoo, someone with the universe in his eyes, cares.


End file.
